This is an amalgam of some pages I donated to help.quake.ie earlier on in the year. Originally written for Cloud-Warrior’s Quake Page on 24/1/97.

Introduction

First of all you’ll need the game Quake, buy it at any computer games store! The most common multiplayer Quake game consists of up to 32 players trying to kill each other (in "deathmatch" or "free for all" mode). When you kill someone you gain a "frag", when you kill yourself you lose a frag. Whoever has the most frags at the end wins.

QuakeWorld is a super new program for registered owners of Quake who play in multiplayer mode. For anyone who has played Quake over a modem using traditional Quake servers and found it very slow, QuakeWorld has reduced the time lag involved and made it playable with ping times of over 300 milliseconds. Even for non-modem players, the QuakeWorld program allows smoother game play and also has many windowed modes.

There are QuakeWorld servers running on hundreds of PCs worldwide, and the idea is that there is a master QuakeWorld server running which has various QuakeWorld servers registered with it. You send a query to the master server, and this allows you to list and play on any of the servers registered with the master.

Instructions

To play QuakeWorld, you should follow these steps:

• To begin, download the latest version of the QuakeWorld 2.30 client software. At present, it seems that this will be the last QW release.
• Run this self-extracting executable and install it in your main Quake directory (the program should find this automatically, e.g., C:QUAKE).
• You should then try and get the latest GameSpy 2.02 front-end (which will also provide access to Quake 2, Hexen 2 and Unreal servers).
• After a registration dialog box, a startup screen will appear listing all players who will be using your PC for playing QuakeWorld. Choose New to add a user or Edit to change an existing one.
  [Click Here to See GameSpy Startup Screen]
• You can then specify your desired QuakeWorld name, colours and skin.
  [Click Here to See GameSpy Player Settings]
• You will then enter the main GameSpy screen where by choosing one of the tabs at the left of the screen, you can view a list of QW servers registered with a particular QW master server, e.g., European servers are listed with the “UK Minos” master server. (25/1/99, the EU QW master has moved to qwmaster.barrysworld.com.)
  [Click Here to See Main GameSpy Screen]
• Choose Tools -> Update This Source to get an updated list of QuakeWorld servers.
• Simply double-click or press ENTER on a desired QuakeWorld server to join a game, or choose Server -> Observe This Game from the menu to spectate a game on a QuakeWorld duel server (two players often challenge each other to deathmatches on these servers).
• You can also bypass the GameSpy front-end totally if you know a QuakeWorld server address by entering Quake command mode. Run the QWCL.EXE program (or GLQWCL.EXE if you have OpenGL capabilities) from your Quake directory. Press ` (backquote, usually beside the number 1 on your keyboard), and then type "connect server.ip.here" and press ENTER. This will connect you to a QuakeWorld game in the same way as in GameSpy, but you will then have to press ` again to leave command mode. Many other commands can be entered in this mode, e.g. "crosshair 1", or "bind q quit". After some initial "Connecting…" messages, you should be in!

Mods or Add-Ons

Next, we will discuss how to play multiplayer QuakeWorld with "mods", specialised add-ons written to alter Quake slightly in a number of ways. These mods often make game play more interesting and diverse, and are referred to as either Total Conversions (TCs) or Partial Conversions (PCs) when they change Quake in a major or minor way. Some of the most popular mods include Capture the Flag and Team Fortress.

The first stage towards playing with mods is downloading the appropriate mod for your machine, usually termed a client. When you have downloaded the mod, you should extract it into an appropriate sub-directory in your main Quake directory. For example, as mentioned earlier, a very popular mod is called "Capture the Flag". You would typically install this in the directory C:QUAKECTF. Similarly, if you downloaded the "Rocket Arena" mod, it would be installed in the ARENA sub-directory. Network games are then connected to in the same way as before.

For more information on QuakeWorld, check out QuakeWorld Central at stomped.com.

To many, id Software are known primarily as the originators of Quake, possibly the most influential 3-d action game of all time. But id also produced a number of ground-breaking games long before people started playing Quake, and its successor, Quake II, on-line.

Vintage games such as the 2-d Commander Keen from id / Apogee were all the rage on the EGA 286s and 386s of old. In Keen, you play an eight-year old kid called Billy Blaze, defender of the Earth against the Vorticon invasion. The quality of graphics increased dramatically from the original ‘Invasion of the Vorticons’ (1990) to the sixth installment, ‘Aliens Ate My Babysitter’. This shot is from the fourth Keen, ‘Goodbye Galaxy’ (1991).

id made a giant leap in gaming with the release of “Wolfenstein 3-D” in 1992. Despite the fact that all player movement was in two dimensions, the 3-d feel of the game enthralled game players all over the world (even in Germany where it is still banned due to the content). In this game, you play B.J. Blazkowicz, an American spy sent to infiltrate the evil Nazi empire. The size of the guns (and enemies!) you find along the way increases as you progress from level to level, and if you’re lucky enough, there is a secret level where you can meet an old friend, Keen himself!

Another breakthrough came in 1993 with the release of another famous game from id, Doom. The first game to make use of “texture mapping”, whereby pre-drawn art is mapped onto the surfaces of a room, Doom had an authentic 3-d feel due to the presence of variable height ceilings and floor levels (unlike the fixed height rooms of Wolf). Carrying on the Wolf tradition, some of the Wolf enemy soldiers appear in a Doom secret level.

But the most novel part of Doom was the multiplayer aspect whereby four players on a PC LAN could engage in a “deathmatch” game and accumulate “frags” against each other. The success of Doom was to be carried on by its successor, Doom II, in 1994.

This multiplayer function was brought to a whole new level with the release of Quake in 1996, and subsequently Quake II in 1998. As well as being the first true 3-d game (able to jump, look up, down, and shoot in those directions), Quake allowed players to engage in deathmatch games over the internet, up to 32 players at a time! This quickly resulted in the formation of Quake “clans”, groups of people who would play together in team games against other clans.

You can also download shareware versions of many of the games mentioned above. Get Commander Keen I, Commander Keen IV, Wolfenstein 3-D, Doom, Quake, or Quake II.